Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro review: You say you want resolution

The Yoga 2 Pro has a knack for bending and folding. The first thing you’ll notice about Lenovo’s latest Windows 8 tab-top is its 360-degree hinge, which enables a range of poses. Keep pushing the multi-touch monitor, and it will turn from a keyboard-and-touchpad laptop (stretch) to an upright, counter-sitting tablet (streeetch) to a completely flat tablet (streeeeeeetch, ooh).

That’s not just a reason to make jokes about “downward facing dog" (like the last model); this form-shifting functionality proves so useful, it now seems like a “duh” move for any multi-touch, keyboard-optional laptop. As such, Lenovo has gone to lengths to make sure the second iteration of the Yoga Pro line brings more to the portable party.

Most notably, the new Yoga has more pixels. The device now comes with a staggering 3200×1800 of those pixels, packed into the same 13.3-inch screen as the original model. Coupled with a slight reduction in chunkiness and a bump in specs, this could set this device up as the ultimate drool-inducing portable in the $1,000 range.

After extensive testing, the Yoga 2 Pro’s size and screen certainly earn it that river of drool. However, in spite of its best qualities (did we mention all of those pixels?), the biggest drawback is the operating system they're tied to.

How to hold it, how to fold it

The Yoga 2 Pro's chassis doesn’t stray far from the last model for better and for worse. It has the same rubberized texture on the inside and out, which feels weird at first touch but proves quite comfortable for lengthy typing stretches. The original Yoga's chiclet keyboard has also seen no changes and fits my large hands pretty well; it lacks anything in the way of distracting design or key placement, and even better, the keys now come backlit.

The trackpad is seemingly unchanged, meaning its sensitivity and usefulness are a little funky. Unfortunately, it didn’t take much time for the trackpad to noticeably darken where our fingers pressed it the most.

Weight has gone down from 3.4 to 3.1 lbs, and our tape measure confirms a thickness of 0.61” on both ends (meaning the tapering cut in material on the front end is mostly illusion). The sides show a minor port shuffling, the only major differences being the HDMI-out port shrinking to mini and the addition of an odd, fingernail-sized button that brings up a system backup menu. Again, Lenovo has elected to include only one USB 3.0 port and to place a USB 2.0 port on the opposite side (seemingly to toy with Ars’ poor Andrew Cunningham, who wants every USB 2.0 port to be replaced as soon as humanly possible, thank you).

The all-important hinge returns, continuing to straddle the fine line between firmness and bendability. It stays mighty still when the Yoga 2 Pro is in “stand” mode, in which the keyboard side lays flat on a table while the touchscreen faces the user, as well as in “tent” mode, in which the screen and keyboard sides form a tent at a roughly 30 degree angle.

Both of these “poses” benefit from rubberized coating on the edges, which plant the device and reduce its wobble. The laptop arrangement results in a teensy bit of wobble, as the screen doesn’t completely lock into place at any upright angle, but you’ll really have to look to notice it.

Enlarge/ Just like the last model, the screen is a beaut, even from very wide angles.

The tent and stand modes prove great ways to showcase this high-res, 16:9 screen, especially since the modes nix the eight inches of distance that would otherwise be occupied by the keyboard. I’ve quite enjoyed laying in bed with the Yoga 2 Pro propped up in stand mode on my chest so that I could comfortably watch “Super HD” content on Netflix within a few inches of my face. Emphasis on “comfortably.” I've engaged in plenty of acrobatics to make wonky tablet cases hold a screen up anywhere near as elegantly as this unit, and it'll be hard to look back after watching late-night TV this way.

For portability’s sake, there’s no Blu-ray drive, so users will probably rely on streaming and downloaded video. While that content usually maxes out at 1080p, the Yoga 2 Pro does a solid enough job rendering and upsampling that resolution’s content without any glaring visual issues. As of right now, this is the best mix of resolution and screen size on the market to deliver eye-popping portable video quality, especially since the 16:9 ratio means less screen space wasted on black bars. Other videos, particularly those from Hulu Plus, don’t look quite as sexy. There’s only so much upsampling can do to convert from 720p (or less) to 1800p.

You can even enjoy remarkably high-res video content when you split the Yoga 2 Pro’s screen into multiple apps, all without taxing the laptop’s specs too much. Our review unit, currently priced at $999, came packed with a dual-core i5-4200U CPU clocked at 1.6 Ghz, along with 4GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD, and an embedded Intel HD 4400 graphics chip. We've already run some performance benchmarks on this particular chip in our review of Acer's Aspire S7 Ultrabook, and we point you to that in order to see how it stacks up to other comparable CPUs.

Shoppers can add $200 to the MSRP to jump to an i7 CPU and a 256GB SSD. You’ll have to upgrade the RAM yourself by popping the keyboard open, which like last model, will only allow you to replace the default offering with a single 8GB stick.Update: According to several readers and Lenovo's own support site, the Yoga 2 Pro's RAM is soldered to the motherboard. You'll have to buy the system with as much RAM as you need, since aftermarket upgrades won't be possible.

We would love more RAM (that’s our bumper sticker, by the way), but pretty much every productivity app we loaded worked without a hitch or an incredible slowdown. While the system’s fans produce an audible hum, it was certainly meek and never proved noticeable while watching movies or TV.

This is no gaming system by any stretch, but knowing that even a Microsoft Surface Pro can handle a touch-friendly version of Civilization V, we tried booting it up. There were immediate errors. For one, the game would never boot into “full-screen” resolution unless we told the game to render 3200×1800, a move that resulted in an immediate crash. For another, even trying to open the game took 20 minutes of trial-and-error, thanks to Windows being unable to figure out how to register our clicks through the initial “click here to continue” prompt, both with mouse and with touch.

Enlarge/ The touchscreen's Windows button is no longer a protruding button, and as such, it sometimes takes an extra tap or two to register.

185 Reader Comments

Windows renders built-in controls at the correct resolution but leaves everything else to the individual apps. Hence the "too-small" controls, images at the wrong size, etc.

It should be noted that apps that use Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) do scale automatically in Windows according to the DPI settings, but many apps either use "legacy" graphics frameworks or (in the case of many cross-platform open-source apps) third-party frameworks that draw each control themselves instead of using system controls.

We have a couple at work that we use for trade show booth use and suchlike. It seems to be a solid machine overall, but I have two issues with it (aside from the Win8 scaling problems and tile interface, which I enjoy testing on the uninitiated; it’s almost as much fun as putting a cat on a hardwood floor for the first time).

First, the screen and positions sensor don’t always pick up the changes, and I sometimes have to re-pose it more than once before the OS flips things around correctly.

Second, when I ordered them through lenovo.com in December, Windows 8 Pro simply was not an option, so we’re gonna have to spend some time and burn some MSDN licenses to attach them to AD. (Yes, I know, consumer-oriented devices and all that, but still.)

Am looking at buying the Pro2 this week or next...currently have a dell laptop in a dock station for dual monitor, keyboard, ether, and charging support. Am interested in the penabled hybrid.With similar dock station available for it, any users with good suggestions on a port replicator or similar to give me external monitor and keyboard support? Have seen a few around, but curious about your preferences.gracias.

Though it is a bit easier for Apple since they push their stock UI elements far more than Microsoft does (which has the added benefit of making most apps look like they simply belong on the desktop, but I digress).

The advantage Apple has, is that their screens are either normal resolution, or 2 x resolution. So apps only need to be optimized for 100% scaling and 200% scaling. Microsoft apps need to be designed for all kind of screens and associated scaling settings.

Not sure where you're getting that. It's true for iOS but on OSX you have several scaling options on Retina MacBook Pros.

Though it is a bit easier for Apple since they push their stock UI elements far more than Microsoft does (which has the added benefit of making most apps look like they simply belong on the desktop, but I digress).

The advantage Apple has, is that their screens are either normal resolution, or 2 x resolution. So apps only need to be optimized for 100% scaling and 200% scaling. Microsoft apps need to be designed for all kind of screens and associated scaling settings.

Not sure where you're getting that. It's true for iOS but on OSX you have several scaling options on Retina MacBook Pros.

Which, interestingly, work by picking a target resolution, rendering to double that, then downscaling the resultant image.

Yep, RAM is soldered in.. why even write about it being upgradeable when you obviously haven't tried. did you even have a unit in hand or just read the press release?

One of the few genuine "innovations" that Apple has brought to the computing industry along with sealed batteries, non-repairability and no more Ethernet ports. /s

Yet the drones keep giving them money, other manufacturers like Lenovo see the Apple profit margins and follow suit.

As devices get smaller, the sealing of the device is inevitable. You aren't going to be able to pop open your iWatch and upgrade the memory either, I'm afraid. (or Google glasses, for that matter)

I have a desktop computer the size of a small refrigerator that I can fiddle about with, change hard drives, memory and 'attempt' to repair, but if you want devices that are going to fit into your backpack they are not going to be made to open up and access.

Devices are already too thin to even accommodate an ethernet port and I expect we'll see that trend continue.

As miniaturization continues, there will be less and less a human hand can do inside these devices.

These are nonsense excuses for justifying ones own spending of excessive cash on something which is not optimally engineered. We aren't talking about tiny devices here, rather laptops with more than enough space for replaceable/upgradable RAM and batteries (and other competitors can do it). The point on Ethernet ports is also nonsense as Samsung and others have designed slide-out Ethernet-ports which fit into a slim chassis. Apple just stubbornly make excuses for their lack of intelligence before removing the port, and the drones echo their nonsense, and idiots like Lenovo see these excuses and Apple's profit margins and so do the same.

No doubt you will be in jubilation and make the same excuses when your "iWatch" appears and the battery isn't replaceable like every single battery-powered watch in existence today. The excuses will propagate and this will be the new norm. Sad. Fashion over function.

What I'm really trying to figure out is whether I'm going to hate the color so much when it's not plugged in that I should just get the 1080p version that they just released. I'm no graphic designer but I've spent enough time doing client-side web UI work that I notice details. It's really the form factor that holds the most appeal for me. I want to read safari books on the train and code when I actually have legroom.

I'd be happy with 1080p if the computers could just do what is considered 'low-impact' gaming today, such as Arkham Asylum at lowest settings. Unfortunately, with a lot of these computers, they just don't have the graphics horsepower to do that.

These laptops aren't built for gaming. I don't see the issue here if you want a gaming laptop - there are several good ones on the market and the recently announced Razer Blade will be awesome for gaming.

Gaming laptops have their own set of problems. They're often hot, loud, heavy, expensive, garish and/or have poor battery life. Meanwhile, not everyone wants to play Star Citizen or MEtro: Last Light at ultra high quality settings. Some ppl just want a laptop that is capable of light, occasional gaming with casual titles or less resource-intensive titles like Sanctum 2, TF2, DoTA2 etc.

While there are mainstream laptops that can fill those roles, they're often not well targeted at this niche, and deciphering the cypher of model SKUs and GPU SKUs (not to mention when multiple mobile parts get the same model numbering) is confusing and exhausting.

In other words, first world problem. But it's annoying if you have it.

I'd be happy with 1080p if the computers could just do what is considered 'low-impact' gaming today, such as Arkham Asylum at lowest settings. Unfortunately, with a lot of these computers, they just don't have the graphics horsepower to do that.

These laptops aren't built for gaming. I don't see the issue here if you want a gaming laptop - there are several good ones on the market and the recently announced Razer Blade will be awesome for gaming.

Gaming laptops have their own set of problems. They're often hot, loud, heavy, expensive, garish and/or have poor battery life. Meanwhile, not everyone wants to play Star Citizen or MEtro: Last Light at ultra high quality settings. Some ppl just want a laptop that is capable of light, occasional gaming with casual titles or less resource-intensive titles like Sanctum 2, TF2, DoTA2 etc.

While there are mainstream laptops that can fill those roles, they're often not well targeted at this niche, and deciphering the cypher of model SKUs and GPU SKUs (not to mention when multiple mobile parts get the same model numbering) is confusing and exhausting.

In other words, first world problem. But it's annoying if you have it.

If that's all you want then you're already covered here. I'm in a similar boat, and my Yoga 1 runs TF2 and Torchlight 2 just fine on an Ivy Bridge chip (HD4000) and I even found Skyrim perfectly playable around medium settings at 1366 x 768. The Yoga 2 has an HD4400 which is about 25% faster than the HD4000. Set it to 1600 x 900 or lower and I'm sure you'll be good to go for "light" gaming.

The complaints above in this thread about lacking HD5000 don't make a ton of sense. Yeah, you'd get better framerates when doing this light gaming (that you can already do perfectly well), but it'd still be woefully underpowered at native res - as would most desktop cards trying to run at 3200 x 1800, for that matter.

I'd be happy with 1080p if the computers could just do what is considered 'low-impact' gaming today, such as Arkham Asylum at lowest settings. Unfortunately, with a lot of these computers, they just don't have the graphics horsepower to do that.

These laptops aren't built for gaming. I don't see the issue here if you want a gaming laptop - there are several good ones on the market and the recently announced Razer Blade will be awesome for gaming.

Gaming laptops have their own set of problems. They're often hot, loud, heavy, expensive, garish and/or have poor battery life. Meanwhile, not everyone wants to play Star Citizen or MEtro: Last Light at ultra high quality settings. Some ppl just want a laptop that is capable of light, occasional gaming with casual titles or less resource-intensive titles like Sanctum 2, TF2, DoTA2 etc.

While there are mainstream laptops that can fill those roles, they're often not well targeted at this niche, and deciphering the cypher of model SKUs and GPU SKUs (not to mention when multiple mobile parts get the same model numbering) is confusing and exhausting.

In other words, first world problem. But it's annoying if you have it.

If that's all you want then you're already covered here. I'm in a similar boat, and my Yoga 1 runs TF2 and Torchlight 2 just fine on an Ivy Bridge chip (HD4000) and I even found Skyrim perfectly playable around medium settings at 1366 x 768. The Yoga 2 has an HD4400 which is about 25% faster than the HD4000. Set it to 1600 x 900 or lower and I'm sure you'll be good to go for "light" gaming.

The complaints above in this thread about lacking HD5000 don't make a ton of sense. Yeah, you'd get better framerates when doing this light gaming (that you can already do perfectly well), but it'd still be woefully underpowered at native res - as would most desktop cards trying to run at 3200 x 1800, for that matter.

4400 is more like ~15% faster than the HD4000 (both of which game surprisingly well for last-gen titles).

Also, you are (I hope) not going to try running games at 3200x1800, but a much easier to render and still pixel-perfect 1600x900. At 1600x900 the HD4400 really struggles with current-gen titles - the HD5000 is MUCH more playable with those titles.

And yeah, 16:9... damn... This resolution is ONLY good for movies. It's too wide and short for EVERYTHING else. Why can't we have more 16:10? Please?...

People get this wrong all the time - the guy at AnandTech just made the same statement in the XPS 15 review. But going to 16:10 in this laptop would almost certainly lose you screen space while remaining equally "short".

Think of it logically. If you start with a 16:9 screen (1600 x 900), there are two ways you can make it a 16:10 ratio. One would be to add 1 unit to the bottom (1600 x 1000). This is what desktop monitors were like in the old days when the "16:10 is better than 16:9" meme was born. You could get a 1920x1200 16:10, or a 1920x1080 16:9. The 16:10 panel was objectively better because you had additional vertical space at the same width.

Today, though, laptop panels make themselves 16:10 using the second option - removing horizontal pixels. That is, take your 16 x 9 screen and cut 1.6 units off of the side. Congratulations, you now have a 16:10 panel (1440 x 900)! But all you've done is reduced your total screen space with no gain to the vertical.

So when you buy, for example, a 16:10 MacBook Air with a 1440 x 900 screen, you're getting something objectively inferior to the original Yoga's 1600 x 900 screen: same exact vertical space, but less width to do things like show multiple windows or hold toolbars. Same with 3200 x 1800 (Yoga 2 Pro) versus 2880 x 1800 (Retina MacBook Pro). Unless the standard resolutions available in laptop panels changes, asking for a 16:10 laptop panel instead of 16:9 (or choosing a Mac) just means getting less desktop space at this point and isn't going to do anything for the perceived "too short" problem in terms of actual content displayed.

ehe, good reasoning, especially in regards to the Anandtech article... I went to check and the statement there is indeed quite perplexing, to say the least: "The display is higher resolution than the Retina, with a 3200x1800 panel compared to Apple's 2880x1800 resolution display. [...] The 3200x1800 panel is the 16:9 alternative to the rMBP 15's panel, and while Dell technically has more pixels, I still would prefer the “taller” screen that Apple uses."

Still, people here generally rant because they express the desire of being offered, at any given pixel width, a taller screen.So if you just point out that the manufacturers don't usually offer that, you're not doing much to ease their frustration. ;^)

In the particular case of tablet convertibles like the Yoga, there's also the side issue that a 16/9 tablet feels kinda awkward in portrait to many people, regardless of actual pixel count.

tl;dr 16:9 is not a problem, because the Yoga 2 displays the same amount of vertical content as any other laptop on the market regardless of screen ratio (at a given pixel density).

If you allow me to go full pedantic...your theorem is incorrect, as a 16/10 screen with the same diagonal of a 16/9 one has a roughly 5% bigger area. So to have the exact same pixel density it should necessarily pack more vertical pixels (roughly 8% more).

Btw, another fun factoid is that if you keep the base width constant, instead of the diagonal, a 16/10 screen with exactly the same pixel density of a 1600x900 one would end up being precisely 1600x1000 =D

your theorem is incorrect, as a 16/10 screen with the same diagonal of a 16/9 one has a roughly 5% bigger area.

That's more an artefact of the fact that measuring varying-aspect-ratio rectangles solely by their diagonal lengths is a really dumb method of measurement that should have been abandoned over a decade ago.

I'd be happy with 1080p if the computers could just do what is considered 'low-impact' gaming today, such as Arkham Asylum at lowest settings. Unfortunately, with a lot of these computers, they just don't have the graphics horsepower to do that.

These laptops aren't built for gaming. I don't see the issue here if you want a gaming laptop - there are several good ones on the market and the recently announced Razer Blade will be awesome for gaming.

Gaming laptops have their own set of problems. They're often hot, loud, heavy, expensive, garish and/or have poor battery life. Meanwhile, not everyone wants to play Star Citizen or MEtro: Last Light at ultra high quality settings. Some ppl just want a laptop that is capable of light, occasional gaming with casual titles or less resource-intensive titles like Sanctum 2, TF2, DoTA2 etc.

While there are mainstream laptops that can fill those roles, they're often not well targeted at this niche, and deciphering the cypher of model SKUs and GPU SKUs (not to mention when multiple mobile parts get the same model numbering) is confusing and exhausting.

In other words, first world problem. But it's annoying if you have it.

If that's all you want then you're already covered here. I'm in a similar boat, and my Yoga 1 runs TF2 and Torchlight 2 just fine on an Ivy Bridge chip (HD4000) and I even found Skyrim perfectly playable around medium settings at 1366 x 768. The Yoga 2 has an HD4400 which is about 25% faster than the HD4000. Set it to 1600 x 900 or lower and I'm sure you'll be good to go for "light" gaming.

The complaints above in this thread about lacking HD5000 don't make a ton of sense. Yeah, you'd get better framerates when doing this light gaming (that you can already do perfectly well), but it'd still be woefully underpowered at native res - as would most desktop cards trying to run at 3200 x 1800, for that matter.

4400 is more like ~15% faster than the HD4000 (both of which game surprisingly well for last-gen titles).

Also, you are (I hope) not going to try running games at 3200x1800, but a much easier to render and still pixel-perfect 1600x900. At 1600x900 the HD4400 really struggles with current-gen titles - the HD5000 is MUCH more playable with those titles.

Sure, but the person I quoted called out "light gaming", not "current-gen titles". An HD5200 with Crystalwell still only gets around 15 FPS in Metro Last Light according to AnandTech, much less a ULV chip with HD5000. If you're buying an ultrabook hoping to play the latest intensive games, you're still kind of doing it wrong.

I'd be happy with 1080p if the computers could just do what is considered 'low-impact' gaming today, such as Arkham Asylum at lowest settings. Unfortunately, with a lot of these computers, they just don't have the graphics horsepower to do that.

These laptops aren't built for gaming. I don't see the issue here if you want a gaming laptop - there are several good ones on the market and the recently announced Razer Blade will be awesome for gaming.

Gaming laptops have their own set of problems. They're often hot, loud, heavy, expensive, garish and/or have poor battery life. Meanwhile, not everyone wants to play Star Citizen or MEtro: Last Light at ultra high quality settings. Some ppl just want a laptop that is capable of light, occasional gaming with casual titles or less resource-intensive titles like Sanctum 2, TF2, DoTA2 etc.

While there are mainstream laptops that can fill those roles, they're often not well targeted at this niche, and deciphering the cypher of model SKUs and GPU SKUs (not to mention when multiple mobile parts get the same model numbering) is confusing and exhausting.

In other words, first world problem. But it's annoying if you have it.

If that's all you want then you're already covered here. I'm in a similar boat, and my Yoga 1 runs TF2 and Torchlight 2 just fine on an Ivy Bridge chip (HD4000) and I even found Skyrim perfectly playable around medium settings at 1366 x 768. The Yoga 2 has an HD4400 which is about 25% faster than the HD4000. Set it to 1600 x 900 or lower and I'm sure you'll be good to go for "light" gaming.

The complaints above in this thread about lacking HD5000 don't make a ton of sense. Yeah, you'd get better framerates when doing this light gaming (that you can already do perfectly well), but it'd still be woefully underpowered at native res - as would most desktop cards trying to run at 3200 x 1800, for that matter.

4400 is more like ~15% faster than the HD4000 (both of which game surprisingly well for last-gen titles).

Also, you are (I hope) not going to try running games at 3200x1800, but a much easier to render and still pixel-perfect 1600x900. At 1600x900 the HD4400 really struggles with current-gen titles - the HD5000 is MUCH more playable with those titles.

Sure, but the person I quoted called out "light gaming", not "current-gen titles". An HD5200 with Crystalwell still only gets around 15 FPS in Metro Last Light according to AnandTech, much less a ULV chip with HD5000. If you're buying an ultrabook hoping to play the latest intensive games, you're still kind of doing it wrong.

You know what I'd like to see? An ultrabook with a docking station that can house a double wide desktop graphics card, or at least a mobile MXM GPU unit (preferably the former). Sony had a vaio that you could plug an external GPU box into a couple years ago, but it was seriously overpriced and underpowered (was a mobile Radeon 6650M). PCIE bandwidth over thunderbolt remained a bottleneck.

I'd love to see a macbook Air-sized device with a docking station that can fit (and cool) a 780Ti or a R9 290X. What, a man can dream, can't he?

It's too bad that this is going to get buried so far from the front, but I just installed the Update 1 for 8.1 on this machine and the scaling improvements on the desktop are visibly noticeable.

Office 2013 while not bad had some issues. It is now quit a bit better.

Also, 8.1.1 seems to be a bit snappier than 8.1

I am calling it 8.1.1 as 3.1.1 was probably the most iconic single point upgrade ever released in the history of the Windows franchise. Not that this is in the same league, but it does make 8 much more usable on a non touch screen. They still have a ways to go though.

It's too bad that this is going to get buried so far from the front, but I just installed the Update 1 for 8.1 on this machine and the scaling improvements on the desktop are visibly noticeable.

Office 2013 while not bad had some issues. It is now quit a bit better.

Also, 8.1.1 seems to be a bit snappier than 8.1

I am calling it 8.1.1 as 3.1.1 was probably the most iconic single point upgrade ever released in the history of the Windows franchise. Not that this is in the same league, but it does make 8 much more usable on a non touch screen. They still have a ways to go though.

It's too bad that this is going to get buried so far from the front, but I just installed the Update 1 for 8.1 on this machine and the scaling improvements on the desktop are visibly noticeable.

Office 2013 while not bad had some issues. It is now quit a bit better.

Also, 8.1.1 seems to be a bit snappier than 8.1

I am calling it 8.1.1 as 3.1.1 was probably the most iconic single point upgrade ever released in the history of the Windows franchise. Not that this is in the same league, but it does make 8 much more usable on a non touch screen. They still have a ways to go though.

Did the update help with any Bluetooth issues???

8.1 made the drivers on my Inspirion 3520 a headache.

The onus is on Dell to deliver updated Bluetooth drivers does it not? I have Windows 8.1 on my MacBook and the Bluetooth drivers just use the standard Microsoft stack with no issues.

It's too bad that this is going to get buried so far from the front, but I just installed the Update 1 for 8.1 on this machine and the scaling improvements on the desktop are visibly noticeable.

Office 2013 while not bad had some issues. It is now quit a bit better.

Also, 8.1.1 seems to be a bit snappier than 8.1

I am calling it 8.1.1 as 3.1.1 was probably the most iconic single point upgrade ever released in the history of the Windows franchise. Not that this is in the same league, but it does make 8 much more usable on a non touch screen. They still have a ways to go though.

Did the update help with any Bluetooth issues???

8.1 made the drivers on my Inspirion 3520 a headache.

The onus is on Dell to deliver updated Bluetooth drivers does it not? I have Windows 8.1 on my MacBook and the Bluetooth drivers just use the standard Microsoft stack with no issues.

8.1 broke bluetooth features..Its not a new OS, it was just an update. It should not have broken driver functions and it did across all vendors, many models..

It's too bad that this is going to get buried so far from the front, but I just installed the Update 1 for 8.1 on this machine and the scaling improvements on the desktop are visibly noticeable.

Office 2013 while not bad had some issues. It is now quit a bit better.

Also, 8.1.1 seems to be a bit snappier than 8.1

I am calling it 8.1.1 as 3.1.1 was probably the most iconic single point upgrade ever released in the history of the Windows franchise. Not that this is in the same league, but it does make 8 much more usable on a non touch screen. They still have a ways to go though.

Did the update help with any Bluetooth issues???

8.1 made the drivers on my Inspirion 3520 a headache.

The onus is on Dell to deliver updated Bluetooth drivers does it not? I have Windows 8.1 on my MacBook and the Bluetooth drivers just use the standard Microsoft stack with no issues.

8.1 broke bluetooth features..Its not a new OS, it was just an update. It should not have broken driver functions and it did across all vendors, many models..

The stack works, just not all the features. e.g., shortcuts.

So, I blame both; M$ first.

M$? Are you 12 years old? Grow up.

And yes, internally 8.1 is a full OS update. The kernel changed to version 6.3 (Windows 7 was 6.1 and Windows 8 was 6.2). So there's opportunity for shit to break. Go to Dell's site and get updated drivers.

It's too bad that this is going to get buried so far from the front, but I just installed the Update 1 for 8.1 on this machine and the scaling improvements on the desktop are visibly noticeable.

Office 2013 while not bad had some issues. It is now quit a bit better.

Also, 8.1.1 seems to be a bit snappier than 8.1

I am calling it 8.1.1 as 3.1.1 was probably the most iconic single point upgrade ever released in the history of the Windows franchise. Not that this is in the same league, but it does make 8 much more usable on a non touch screen. They still have a ways to go though.

Did the update help with any Bluetooth issues???

8.1 made the drivers on my Inspirion 3520 a headache.

The onus is on Dell to deliver updated Bluetooth drivers does it not? I have Windows 8.1 on my MacBook and the Bluetooth drivers just use the standard Microsoft stack with no issues.

8.1 broke bluetooth features..Its not a new OS, it was just an update. It should not have broken driver functions and it did across all vendors, many models..

Hmm. I think power users understand that even the crappiest travel mouse is far more productive than even the best touchpad.

In Windows, I agree 100%. I've never had a great experience with touchpads with Windows; touchscreens (with 8.x) and mice (with XP, 7, and 8.x) just give such a better user experience than a touchpad in my experience. With OSX, though, multitouch gestures on the touchpad are so deeply integrated into the OS that I think you're better off with a touchpad than a mouse in most circumstances.

What I'm really trying to figure out is whether I'm going to hate the color so much when it's not plugged in that I should just get the 1080p version that they just released. I'm no graphic designer but I've spent enough time doing client-side web UI work that I notice details. It's really the form factor that holds the most appeal for me. I want to read safari books on the train and code when I actually have legroom.

Bit late to update here but I went with full res and never regretted it. I notice the color issue once in a blue moon. No impact on games that I actually CAN play on this thing. Build quality is outstanding. I rarely use the tablet functionality but it's great when you want it and I would still buy this laptop even if I never used that stuff. Stand is great for movies in bed.

The 3200×1800 display has yellows that look slightly brownish. Puke yellow I call it. I've seen a few of them be sent in for repairs due to the terrible yellows, only for the units to be sent back with an explanation that that is a normal thing.